White Shadows
by Phoenixfire1389
Summary: ...Of course I came to you of my own free will, Kalas... anything would have been better than that void that they sent me to...
1. Cast From the Light

This is your warning, and I will only say it once. This story will be violent. This story will be bloody. There will be character death, cursing, and LOTS AND LOTS OF SPOILERS. **And the rating will go up, making this one of the few M-rated Baten Kaitos fic on this site.**

And, most importantly of all, **_there will be no happy ending_**.

Oh, and I don't own Baten Kaitos. There. I warned you.

Wait. One more thing…

**PLAGERIZE AND DIE. THERE AREN'T ENOUGH BATEN KAITOS FICS ON THIS SITE FOR YOU TO HIDE FROM ME.**

There. NOW I warned you.

Summary: We all know what happens in the Lava Caves. Well, things are different this time. The Spirit isn't going to be helping Xelha this time. In fact, she's not going to be leaving Kalas… KalasxSpirit, One-sided KalasxXelha and MelodiaxKalas.

This story is more of a 'what if' story than anything else... The Guardian Spirit's name is Vera, although you might see some similarities with Crimson Rain when they get to the Guardian's world, this story doesn't have anything to do with my other Baten Kaitos fic. Also… don't expect this to be updated very often. Because, quite frankly, writing this depresses the heck out of me.

Oh, and for those of you who DO read Crimson Rain, I AM going to be updating soon. Just need to iron a few things out… look for it tomorrow.

Now, without further ado…

White Shadows

_Prologue: Cast from the Light_

A girl sat in her wheelchair beneath one of the trees in the courtyard of the campus. She was dressed like the typical dork, blue turtleneck sweater and blue plaid skirt, sensible but not fashionable brown loafers, navy blue knee socks that covered her far-too skinny legs. She looked like one of those anorexic teenagers that you see everyday, pale and so thin that she could have passed for a scarecrow. But unlike them, she did not starve herself to look like a sack of bones. It was how she had been born.

_And look, there go a pair of the idiots now, _she thought as a pair of unnaturally skinny teenagers wearing too much makeup passed her, pausing only for a moment to shoot her looks equal parts pity and scorn. Her cheeks burned under that stare. Everyone looked at her like that.

She tucked a limp strand of black hair behind her ear, scanning the campus grounds nervously and looking out for the person who was coming to pick her up, her blue eyes (in her opinion, her only redeeming feature) darting all over the place. The campus was very pretty, really, with the trees covered in their autumn leaves and the blue, blue sky…

Bit it was just a little too cold for her to be outside much longer without a jacket. Even though it was mild, low to mid fifties, it was still to cold for her feeble body. She was going to get sick if she stayed out much longer…

"Vera!" exclaimed a bright-looking young woman dressed in a dark blue tank top and black slacks. Her enthusiastic smile didn't quite reach her stormy gray eyes.

"Mariel," Vera replied, nodding, not bothering to try and replicate the false warmth in the other young woman's voice. "You're almost a halfan hour late."She tilted the joystick on her chair and urged it forward. Time to go at long last…

* * *

Mariel lived alone in a small, one-story house with a basement. Her parents had died shortly after she had turned eighteen. Vera secretly believed that Mariel had done something to them magically. But whether or not foul play came into the equation, Mariel was still the only local in their coven, and the only one who had a house to herself. So circles were always held in her basement, away from parents and prying eyes.

"Let me help you out of the car," Mariel said, opening her door and offering her a hand.

"I can do it myself, you know," Vera reminded her 'friend'.

"Yes, but if you overexert yourself, you won't be able to stand through the entire circle. You should stay in your wheelchair for now."

Vera made no more complaints; she knew that Mariel was right. So she allowed herself to be wheeled inside and carried into the basement. Mariel's basement reflected what happened in there, the walls were lavishly decorated with all sorts of pagan wall hangings, and the room smelled of incense. There was even an elaborate altar.

"This is a very complicated circle, Mariel. I'm impressed," Vera said. And she was. Instead of the basic pentagram that they normally used for circles, thecore design was a hexagram, surrounded by countless runes, over half of which the sickly girl didn't recognize, written in a rusty ink. The ones that she could didn't have very positive meanings, but this was nothing new to her. _It's not like white magic is ever going to heal this cursed body of mine… _"Is this in blood, perhaps?"

"Yes."

"What kind of blood?"

"You're happier not knowing," Mariel said as she placed the ceremonial candles in their proper places. (Colored white, turquoise, red, green, blue, and black today). That meant that the blood was human.

"Oh. I hope if you used an unwilling subject you disposed of the body discreetly," Vera sighed. Try as she might to ignore it, the thought that her 'friends' had murdered someone in cold blood to fuel the power of a circle threw what was left of her conscience into rebellion. _Stop it. This is the only way I'll ever be normal._

"This'll be the first time you've participated in a circle of this kind," Mariel said as she bustled around with the final preparations, running a hand through her perfectly wavy and shiny red hair. "You should be proud. That means that Abel trusts you enough for the _really _dark stuff."

"I'm ready. By the way, what kind of circle is this?" Vera asked, rising shakily from the fold-up chair that she had been deposited in and tottering over to the circle, stepping inside as carefully as she could to avoid ruining the painstakingly painted design and leaning down, so that her bad eyes could make out the archaic symbols better.

"It's… a banishing circle," Mariel said with an evil smirk. Vera gasped involuntarily as she felt what little physical strength she had been born with leave her body, and her legs, which had always been feeble no matter how she tried to strengthen them with exercises, gave out. "Well, actually, it's not just a banishing circle. This is more like payment. You see, we've racked up a lot of debt with dark things, kid, and they want payment. Despite the fact that your body and life force are pathetically weak, your soul's power is very strong, very… bright. So, instead of being sucked into one of the Other Realms… we're sending you there instead."

"So… you recruited me with the intent of doing this to me from the start," she gasped. "You bitch."

Mariel only smirked. "It's not my fault you're a gullible goodie-two-shoes, although I will miss the power boost you give to the coven… not to mention Abel and I, of course. And the other members of the coven should be here in three, two, one…"

"Ah, Vera, I see that you've made it. I had heard that you might be returning to your hometown, and I was most worried that you might not be here tonight. Six months of preparation would have been ruined," Abel said as he entered, followed by the other eleven members of the coven. _Damn, and if I'd decided to go back home and visit Mom for her birthday the way I'd originally planned, I wouldn't be here right now…_

"Abel Norrison, you have broken your oath to me, and it shall rebound upon you. I hope it kills you," Vera spat. _You promised… you promised…_

"Not true, my sweet and foolish invalid. I promised I would make it so you would no longer have need of wheelchairs, glasses, and medication. And once you are a spirit, you will have no need of any of those things… of course, I can't guarantee you'll survive the denizens of the nether dimensions, but you have a very powerful soul. You might make it." However, judging by the malicious glint in his gorgeous dark eyes, he found this to be highly unlikely.

"If I ever return here, I swear… by the graves of my ancestors… I'll kill you first," Vera vowed in a breathy whisper. For a moment, Abel hesitated at the fiery rage in her normally forlorn blue eyes. But he gave himself a mental slap and snapped out of it. Even though Vera's powers were greater than anything he'd ever seen before, strong enough to hold her in this world when she should have died long ago of a weak heart and other birth complications, the hexagram would restrain her until they could send her off. And even with her great spiritual strength, Vera would never be able to return from the outer dimensions…

Vera watched as the twelve of them started to dance around her and chant, and she glared with a poison that none of them would have thought possible from the normally subdued young woman before that. Caroline McGuinneth, her only real friend in the coven, looked torn, and kept on shooting her 'I'm sorry' looks every three seconds. _Yes, Carrie, I can tell that you're sorry, for all that it will help me now… hypocrite. _She saw the 'twins', Jane and Vanessa, shooting her equally vapid blonde smiles, as if they were pulling one over on her. _Useless idiots, those two. They'll probably be next…_ Abel and Mariel, the leaders of the coven, high Priest and Priestess, completely ignoring her, totally confident in their power, their beauty, their poisoned cunning… _Traitors… kill them first… _John Pewter, Jacob Porter, Harry Peterson, the 'muscles' of the coven, usually the ones that brought in the blood sacrifices. More stupid pawns. Daphne Calandera, her blue-green eyes and beautiful face as blank and unreadable as ever… only the tiniest trace of something that Vera thought might be scorn. Raven and Rivven, whose last names she did not know, two of the scariest human beings she had ever known, who truly delighted in the suffering of others. Morgan, the nice boy who had often helped her with her wheelchair, who was now staring at her with hungry eyes…

And suddenly the chanting that she had been unable to decipher grew to a fever pitch and she screamed and screamed as her soul was ripped from her feeble body.

The last thing that she was aware of was an inhuman voice laughing at her from somewhere in the darkness.

* * *

The explosion of energy as her soul and body were sundered shook the little house to its foundations. The basement door flew open and multicolored light streamed forth from every window. The twelve were knocked off their feet by the strength of the tremor that their banishing had invoked. The candles were upset, they sputtered briefly before going out simultaneously. The power went out at the same time. For a full five minutes, the earth shuddered like a wounded animal, then everything went still.

Abel, being the strongest, was also the first to recover. He got shakily to his feet and summoned his power. An orb of light flickered weakly into existence, casting just enough light to enable everyone to see their surroundings.

No one seemed to be badly hurt except Carrie, who had been unfortunate enough to be standing directly underneath a shelf, which had hit her on the head as it had fallen. She was bleeding where she had been struck, but surprisingly was still conscious.

"What… what the hell was…" Vanessa started, her typically breathy voice sounding even breathier as panic overtook her limited senses.

"The threefold law," Carrie interrupted in a singsong voice, her brown eyes disturbingly out of focus. "We shall reap what we hath sown."

People shifted nervously and looked vaguely guilty for a few moments. Abel ignored them and squatted down to look into her eyes. The girl, unsurprisingly, had aconcussion.

"Mariel, get Carrie to the hospital. Everyone else, get the circle off the floor and hide the other stuff. The police will probably be coming. Remember, Vera collapsed during the quake."

"But what if someone saw the light?" Mariel asked.

Abel snorted. "Even if they tell the cops, who's going to believe them? No one's ever going to figure out what happened to Vera. Business as usual."

* * *

_Dark… so cold, so dark… so many terrifying things… I grow weary of being the only true light in this world…_

_Why was I sent here, God? What did I do that was so horrible? All I wanted was to fix the ruined body that you cursed me with… did I really deserve this?_

_Strange… I thought Hell was supposed to burn… didn't they always tell me that it was my fate to burn in Hell for eternity? I'd be more than happy to, now. I'd rather be anywhere but here… it's so lonely here… just me and the demons, no one to talk to…_

_Every day, I look at that castle in the center of this void. I have learned that it is called 'Cor Hydrae'. It glows with an unearthly light. I think there might be people living in the castle, but every time I get close I am repelled by some sort of barrier. It is an eerie place, and I doubt that anyone who lives there would be very nice, but even if Satan himself lives there, at least I would have someone to talk to besides myself._

_What's this? A light in this void that isn't me or that hideous castle? Perhaps I have finally lost my mind. Or maybe it really is a way out… there's only one way to find out…_

"_I think that spirit likes you, Kalas. Why don't you try talking to it?"_

"_Ok… Hello, I am Kalas. May I ask your name?"_

"_I am…Vera."_

"_Well then, Vera, would you like to bond with me and become my Guardian Spirit?"_

"_Yes… but on one condition."_

"_What?"_

"_Please promise me that you won't leave me alone… I am so very sick of being lonely."_

"_Okay… I promise."_


	2. Beginning of the Fall

Disclaimer: I don't own Baten Kaitos. Although I did say that in the last chapter...

_Chapter One: Beginning of the Fall_

"_What happened here?" _Vera asked her new partner. They were standing in front of a ruined building, possibly a home. Kalas kept his hood up, and had spoken to her only in whispers since they had come to the town, even though it was still in the middle of the night and no one was out. The wreck of the building looked fairly recent, as if it had only happened a few days before… _"Kalas? You haven't said anything to me in over an hour. You've just been standing here, looking at this wreck. Please tell me what's wrong?" _she begged.

"I think it's safe now."

"_Safe for what?"_

"Safe enough to try and find his body. I want to give him a decent burial."

"…_this was… your home, wasn't it?"_

"Yes."

They searched for several hours. The wreckage was horrible, as the building had been ravaged by some sort of fire. The second and first stories had fallen into the basement, leaving a depression in the back half of the house. Kalas spent the rest of the night moving wreckage, talking only sparingly to Vera. In turn, Vera only made two or three attempts to start a conversation. She felt uncomfortable, trying to strike up a discussion about anything with this stranger whom she knew nothing of save his name. Kalas hadn't said much to her in the hours since they had bonded. And, upon seeing the wreck of his once-home, she could understand why.

Halfway through the night, the sky clouded, for which Vera was silently grateful. The clouds made it harder for her to see the devastation.

About two hours before dawn, it started to rain. This didn't bother Vera at all, but she wasn't so far gone from humanity that she had forgotten what it was like to be cold and wet and miserable. _"Kalas…"_

"Not now, Vera. I have to do this."

His rejection stung, and why Vera was not certain. She was used to rejection, why did the rebuke of someone she had known for not even twelve hours sting so? _Perhaps it is because he is handsome, and I am unused to being on cordial terms with good-looking teenage boys? _No, that wasn't it; it was something unfamiliar and infinitely more complex. What was it?

Dawn came, and the rain did not slacken. Kalas moved another blackened beam with a weary grunt, he was exhausted, but he couldn't finish. _He must truly love whoever died here…_

Kalas let out a strangled sob, and Vera took a closer glimpse at what he had unearthed.

It was a charred human hand.

Kalas threw himself at the wreckage like a man gone mad, pawing his way through the rubble. His hands became bloody from splinters and shrapnel and jagged pieces of what had once been machines, but he ignored the pain in his fervor to get to the bottom of the pile.

What Kalas unearthed was a man (At least, Vera _thought _it was a man, his face was so badly disfigured that it could have belonged to either a man or a woman), his body badly burned by the blaze that had consumed his home. Vera could distinguish on his corpse several gunshot wounds and a long slash that ran from his left shoulder to his right hip, a neat, diagonal slash that could have been left by some sort of sword or spear or scythe. When Kalas hoisted up the mangled body, several metal things fell from the ashes of what had possibly been a belt. They were partially melted, but looked like they might have been tools at some point in time.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Kalas screamed into the morning air. He rose up, his wings flaring out as he screamed his rage and despair at the uncaring gray sky before crumpling around the body and started to sob. Vera felt tears prick at the corners of her eyes, a sensation that set off alarm bells in the back of her head, and she knelt down and tried to pat Kalas on the shoulder. Her hands went right through him, of course, but his sobs quieted slightly, as if he could sense the gesture and was grateful for it.

"I… I didn't find anything for so long, I had hoped that he had gotten away somehow. Even though I saw that bitch shoot him, even though that bastard with the scythe got him across the chest… I had hoped, maybe, that he had gotten out…" He choked back another sob and continued, "but he didn't. He's dead, just like Fee. They're both gone, and I'm all alone.

"_Um… I know I'm not worth much… and I'm not as good as a living person, who can be touched, but… for what it's worth… I'm here. As long as you don't leave me, I will stay by your side."_

"Vera… ah, I'm sorry, I forgot you were there," Kalas said. "I've sort of been ignoring you…"

"_Hey, from what I can tell, you've had a hectic night. Maybe you can tell me what the hell is going on… later. You need to bury him first. Bodies decompose faster when they're wet."_

"R-right," he murmured, still seeming badly out of focus. _Probably having a breakdown. Hell, if my whole family had been murdered in one night, I'd be a wreck too…_

"Hey, it's the one-winged freak!"

Both of them whipped around. Kalas's screams of anguish had drawn a small crowd, inhabitants of the town, mostly children and the shifty, ill-clothed and/or mean looking folk that every town is plagued with: the troublemakers.

"How come you didn't die when those two Imperial freaks came in and burned the house down?" someone else shouted. Kalas visibly flinched.

"It's your fault Georg's dead! People with only one wing are bad luck!"

"One-wing! One-wing!"

"Malformed wings mean a malformed heart! You're nothing but trouble, Kalas!"

Red started to tint the edges of Vera's vision, as she flashed back to a place both a long time ago and far, far away…

* * *

"..._such a shame… they're such nice people, and that girl is such a burden…"_

"_Really? I think that's what they get for taking risks on such experimental drugs. Some people just aren't meant to have children…"_

"_She's nothing but a useless drain of the family assets… She's lucky her father's such a successful lawyer, or they never would have been able to afford her upkeep…"_

"_Vera's sick _again?_ But, Mommy, we were supposed to finally go to Disney world!"_

"_Not that I believe this, but …they say that she can shout command words and funny things happen…"_

"…_Vera's _always _sick! Something like this _always_ happens, whenever we're about to do something fun!"_

"…_unnatural things… like some boys were talking with her, just _playing, _mind you, not picking on her…"_

"_You're never there for me! You always have to rush off and take care of her!"_

"…_and she shouted 'wind!' A nearby tree was struck by lightning a moment later…"_

"_She's the worst big sister ever!"_

"…_almost like she's a witch, no?"_

"_I wish… I WISH SHE'D NEVER BEEN BORN!"

* * *

_

"_Shut up!"_ Vera screamed, trying to clutch her head to drown out the voices. **_"All of you, shut up and go away!"_**

And as she screamed that, the gathered townspeople heard her voice for the first time. And a few thought they saw flickers of a girl dressed in blue, tearing at her black hair and screaming silently in pain…

Words sprang into Vera's head, as they always did whenever she truly called upon the magic. **"I am the Water, the Dispeller of Fire!"** Blue light gathered around Vera and Kalas, and the water that was all over from the rain started to gather into energy. **"Sacred Spring!"**

Water erupted from the ground. If it had gone off directly beneath the feet of the townsfolk, it surely would have killed most of them. However, Vera's blind rage had ruined her aim, and the water bust up in a frothing fountain directly between the startled townspeople and the bewildered Kalas.

"I'm only here to bury Gramps!" Kalas shouted at the shell-shocked townsfolk. "And I swear, after this, I will never set foot in Balanicore again! So just leave me alone, you hear? Or next time, I'll kill you!"

Some of the townspeople nodded at him numbly, others seemed too paralyzed by what they had just seen to do even that. They all left in a hurry, though. "I'm sorry I took credit for…"

"_No hard feelings," _Vera responded numbly. _"Probably easier for them to believe that you did that than a dead girl trying to kill them, eh?"_

"That was amazing, though," Kalas said, managing a tiny half-smile. "You really are powerful."

_Amazing? Maybe… it's also the closest I've ever come to really killing someone…

* * *

_

Four hours later, a little outside of town, they buried the man named Georg, who Vera learned had been Kalas's grandfather. Kalas said a few words. Vera sang Amazing Grace. Kalas cried some more.

"Alright, I'm done," Kalas sighed, angrily wiping the last of the tears off his face. "No more crying. Tears are for the weak."

"…" Vera wasn't quite sure she agreed with that, but now didn't seem like the right time to tell him.

"Vera. I suppose you might have wondered why I wanted a Guardian Spirit?" Kalas asked.

"_Well…" _Although she had been too delighted to question why Kalas and the other girl were doing in an area that she could _tell _hadn't been inhabited by humans… _ever_… she had begun to question once given time to think.

"Vera, I need your help." He looked right at her when he said this, but there was no way he could see her. She couldn't see herself. It had to be simply a lucky guess. "I want you to promise me that you'll help me."

"…" she didn't want to say yes, not without knowing what was required of her, but how could she say no after everything that had happened? _"Very well. I will do as you ask."_

"Do you give me your word?"

"…_Yes."_

"Alright. We're going to have to lay low for a few days. Maybe I'll show you Reverance. Most people who aren't from Mira think it's a really weird place. After that, we're going to have to head back to Balanicore for one last time."

"_Why?"_

"We have to meet that girl. The one who was there when we bonded. I made a promise to her, too," Kalas said.

"_What's her name, again?"_

"Melodia."

* * *

Phoenixfire: Wow! I updated!

YamiPhoenixfire: You're lazy.

Phoenixfire: No! Go away! You weren't supposed to interfere with this story.

YamiPhoenixfire: Too bad.

Phoenixfire: (Presses button. YamiPhoenixfire is ejected into the closet.) Okay. First of all, thank you for reading the second chapter of White Shadows. I think the next chapter or two are also going to be about what happened before Kalas and the Spirit go to Celebari and meet Xelha. I'm not interested in doing a retelling of the whole game (cause I'm waaaaay too lazy for that) so I'll probably skip from Celebari to the Lava Caves and Kalas's betrayal. Because it's only after that that things start to get really interesting

For everyone out there who is also a fan of Crimson Rain, I don't think I'm going to be able to get another chapter up before the end of the weekend. However, I'm dressing up as one of my characters from that story this year… stupid Wal-Mart, if they'd just had ONE ghost costume left for me to cut up, I wouldn't have to resort to this…

I would like to thank chise, Katrina Ice Angel of Darkness, Karina Gomez, Fan Fan Girl, and Luna-Starr for reviewing. I hope you will continue to read in the future.

(wow… and to think that this entire chapter was inspired by _one _short scene in the opening…)


	3. A Brief Intermission: No Place Like Home

_A Brief Intermission: No Place Like Home…_

She awoke from her troubled dreams with a cry and a shuddering gasp that jolted her off the edge of her bed, causing her to hit the floor with a resounding _thump!_

"Oh, hell," she murmured, looking around at the mess she had made of her sheets, "Not _again…_"

She disentangled herself from her sheets and dragged herself to the bathroom. She hadn't had one of these nightmares in four days; she had thought the tranquilizers her father had all but forced the doctor to prescribe to her were working.

And yet here she was, staggering to the toilet as the last remnant of said drugs dissipated from her system… several hours too early.

She just made it to the toilet before she lost everything that had been in her stomach. The dream always left her with such a feeling of revulsion that she couldn't keep anything down for at least an hour afterwards, not even water, and she knew she wouldn't be sleeping for the rest of the night.

_It's back… and it's gotten worse…_

"**Light…"** she mumbled. A plastic container filled with cotton balls that was sitting near the sink started glowing a pure white. With a sigh, she dragged herself to her feet.

Her long, wavy hair was disheveled, and her nightgown was an absolute mess. Her eyes were wide and glassy.

"I look like the human version of a deer in headlights," she muttered with a wry grin that quickly faded into a worried frown. The dream…

Before she had been forced to seek help, the dreams had been horrifying, yes, but they had always faded almost completely from her memory moments after waking, leaving only vague impressions of hands clawing at her or walking for forever in a black void. However, this dream had been so vivid…

* * *

_A girl stands facing away from her. Her black hair hangs limply at her waist, and she is wearing nothing but a simple white robe that barely reaches her knees. She reaches out blindly and her hands claw the air, trying to touch something, anything at all._

_A large black bird flies up. It is an odd bird, with piercing blue eyes and one wing made out of metal, not flesh. "Come, I will lead you," says the bird. The girl reaches out, and the bird lands on her outstretched arm. As it lands, chains made of pink blossoms tie her to the bird, but the girl does not notice._

_The girl follows the directions of the bird, until they reach an old, decrepit looking mansion of some sort._

"_Go inside," says the bird._

"_Must I?" asks the girl in white. "It has a bad feel to it. I'd rather not."_

"_You have trusted me this far, as you have promised to do. Why doubt now?"_

"_Very well… I will do as you say." And they enter._

_The ancient doors slam shut behind the pair._

"_I have been expecting you," says the skeleton standing at the top of the balcony. "Come closer, we have much do discuss."_

_As she speaks, threads of black energy spread from her fingers and attach themselves to both the girl and the bird, trapping them. The girl starts to walk up the stairs. She turns back to the door, as if unaware of all the chains she has been ensnared in, for her expression isn't terrified or angry, but merely wistful._

_She then proceeds forward again. A door at the top of the stairs swings open and darkness pours out of it. The girl looks back one more time with that same wistful expression and a tinge of sorrow in her eyes._

"_Come in! Time grows short!"_

_The girl walks in, and the door slams shut behind her. She knows that the girl and the bird will never come out again, and she wails…_

_For the girl in white is her elder sister, Vera…

* * *

_

She shuddered again. She then dragged herself to her feet and went back into her room. As she leaves the bathroom, the cotton ball lantern goes out.

"**Fire," **she mumbled, and the red scented candles that sit on the windowsill lit. Much as she would have loved to turn on the lights and banish every single shadow in the room, she knew that she must not. If her parents were to see it…

"There is nothing wrong with me," she whispered to the night as the shadows in her bedroom flickered and danced. "And there is nothing wrong with Vera. She'll come out of her coma any day now; all the doctors say so…"

Her words rang hollow in her own ears, she knew she was just trying to make herself feel better.

Her eyes lingered on the digital clock that sat on her nightstand.

12:07

_It is going to be a very long night indeed.

* * *

_

Abel walked out of his medical class with a grin. It had been the first day working with real cadavers, and two guys and a girl had become sick enough that they had to leave. They were the pansies. _Maybe next time we need a sacrifice, we can use one of them…_

"Abel."

He whirled, and there was his girlfriend, Mariel, leaning against the wall next to the door. She looked absolutely exhausted, which wasn't surprising. The cops had gone over every inch of her home, trying to find proof of foul play in Vera's… accident. They had found none, so Mariel had been allowed back into her home sometime yesterday.

However, yesterday she had been tired but absolutely confident. They had destroyed all evidence of any crimes committed in the house, and had gotten away with it. Mariel had been on top of the world.

Now she looked like Lucifer was leaning on her shoulder, discussing what he was going to do with her soul once she got to Hell.

"Mariel, baby, what's wrong? You look like Vera's ghost popped up and tried to kill you," Abel said, half joking.

"Don't even kid about that…" Mariel muttered, running a hand through her messy auburn hair. "I need you to come with me to my place. There's something you have to see."

"Mariel…. I have another class in thirty minutes."

"So skip it," she insisted. There was a frantic light in her gray eyes that told Abel that Mariel wanted him to come over for a serious reason, not just to fool around with magic or have sex.

"Can't you just tell me what's going on?" he asked softly, putting a comforting arm on her shoulder.

"No, there are too many people here…" she said, her eyes darting to the small but growing crowd of people who were looking at them with some interest, trying to eavesdrop without being too obvious about it.

"Okay, we can go to your place and then you can tell me what's got you so upset." He put a protective arm around her and walked her out to her car.

And people whispered and the gossips gossiped, and they all wondered why the girl with the red-gold hair had been so upset. People who knew who she was figured that the police had found something after all, that she had done something to the cripple girl that she had been friends with.

The real reason was far less mundane and a great deal more dangerous.

Mariel led Abel into her basement. There was nothing out of the ordinary that he could see, although the room did have a heavy feel of magic to it, more so than usual. However, considering the fact that they had performed an incredibly powerful banishing spell there just two weeks earlier, perhaps that was to be expect.

"Mariel, all I see is the basement, which I see every Saturday. Why am I missing Psychology II… which I am having problems with, as you know… to see your basement?"

"Use the Sight," Mariel said simply. Abel looked at her like she was daft. Using the Sight would allow him to see the remnants of spells (and the circles used to cast them), but they used Mariel's basement to perform magic so often that the possibility of seeing anything specific was next to nil. "Just do it!" she hissed at him.

"Alright, alright, if it will put your doubts to rest…" he sighed, and mumbled the words required to activate it.

And he gasped.

On the floor, the circle they had used to banish Vera was quite clearly outlined, and it flickered many colors, usually red and white for the most part, but also turquoise, green, blue, and black. Spells that had run their course always… always!... faded into gold, gray, or pale pink, and stayed one color. They did not flicker like that.

Nor did they emit a steady column of light that rose up to heaven (as far as he could tell) that could only be seen with the Sight

This wasn't what bothered him the most though. What bothered him was a single rune that pulsed between red and black that lay in the heart of the hexagram… a rune that had most certainly NOT been included in the original design.

The double-fishhook. Yr.

The rune symbol for death.

"We need to get out of here," Abel said, his throat constricting. "I need to call… Daphne and Raven and Riven and… no one else. Everyone else can be the scapegoats. God only knows who'll show up to investigate this…"

"You don't mean that. You know what's going to happen. The portal is still open, Abel! Look at the godforsaken _rune_! Yr! Goddess protect us!"

"That's impossible," he said flatly. "A portal can't stay open for more then a day at most. It would collapse in on itself without a powersourse."

"What if Vera's the powersource?"

"Then we'd all be dead by now," he said coldly. "Gather your things. I'll make the phone calls. I want the two of us to be in Canada by Friday at the latest. I don't give a shit about what everyone else decides to do."

Mariel nodded and rushed upstairs. Abel collapsed and fell to his knees. Only then did he notice the spell components that had been kicked haphazardly beneath the altar, along with a spellbook.

Abel got to his feet and walked over to it, picking it up and opening it to the marked page…

_Dispelling of Harmful or Uncontrollable Magicks… _the title of the spell read.

A grimace marred his handsome features. The spell was simple enough, more than simple enough for Mariel to have cast on her own.

_Clearly it didn't work…_

He put the book back where he found it and sighed. A portal that refused to be closed. Yr on the ground where no one had traced it. Unless…

_Unless one of the people investigating Vera is able to use magic…_

Abel tried to shove that unpleasant thought out of his head. It was going to be a _long _day, and he had nothing to look forward to but three rather unpleasant phone calls to make and a long car trip with a terrified woman. Joy.

* * *

Okay, don't kill me. This sort of just popped into my head. I know these little snippets _seem_ like they have nothing to do with the story, but don't just gloss over them, they will be important later on. And I sort of have writer's block on the 'real' chapter two... don't expect it for a while...

**Reveiwer Responses**

Wolf from the Hidden Flames: Heh, nice penname. I am glad that you like this story so far.

Katrina Ice Angel of Darkness: Eheh, I was kinda worried about what people would think of the last chapter, I'm glad you found Kalas to be believable. He'll be more like he is in the game in the next chapter

Luna-Starr: Yes, it IS rather depressing. You were all warned…

205780: Actually, considering that English seems to be your second language, you're not too bad. At least you have an EXCUSE, unlike SOME of the people on this sight. (takes a moment to shudder at the people who are allergic to things like grammar rules and spell-check) I'm American, and **I **find the language to be difficult from time to time. Much tough it galls me to admit it, if my mom weren't an English major, I doubt my writing would be this good. She got me into books at an early age, so I just got used to seeing things written on a page spelled right and grammatically correct.

Wow, look at me ramble. I think my original point was that if you just keep practicing, you'll get better.

(blinks. Looks at page.) Pointless rambling… I am starting to sound like… MY MOTHER! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooo… (breath) OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooo (breath) oooooooooooooooooooooo! (dies)

(bursts into flame and rises from own ashes)

Well, I'm done. Please review…


	4. A Deal With the Devil

_Chapter Two: A Deal with the Devil_

Reverence was quite possibly the strangest place that Vera had ever been. The whole place was filled with architecture that looked like it had been ripped out of a picture book on crack, and the inhabitants seemed to be more like wind-up-toys than people, although they were nice enough. Except for the one called Clairvoyant, who rambled on and on about the wrath of some god named Malpercio every time she and Kalas passed them. The townspeople assured them that this was normal behavior for Clairvoyant, and that they should ignore him/her/it/whatever. Vera had asked Kalas about this Malpercio, and he had told her that it was some old myth, that Malpercio didn't actually exist. Something in the way he had answered made Vera certain that he was hiding something, but she decided to let it slide. Kalas would tell her when he felt ready to do so, not a moment before.

They wandered other places. The gardens of Detronue, where people could walk on the ceiling, a city made entirely out of candy, whose name she could never remember…

_I feel like I fell headfirst into a storybook, _Vera thought to herself

However, all good things must come to an end, and all too quickly Kalas decided to go back to Balanicore.

"_Kalas, are you really sure you want to go back?" _Vera asked, noticing her partner's tenseness.

"Yes. Without Melodia's help, I'll never be strong enough to have my revenge. I'm going to kill Giacomo and his flunkies if it's the last thing I do!" Kalas hissed, getting some very odd glances from people walking through the candy-coated city.

"_Who is Melodia?" _Vera asked.

"What's wrong, jealous?" Kalas whispered with a faint smirk.

"_I am….!"_ Vera paused, and considered her tone. Yes, she _did _sound jealous. Worse, she sounded like some girl getting possessive over her _boyfriend_. She barely knew Kalas, and sure, he was attractive, but she was a _spirit. _A floating mass of _cherry blossoms. _She had no right to act like that with him. _Besides, even if I was here physically, he wouldn't like me like that. Scratch that, he wouldn't like me at all. I would be a hindrance. In this form, at least I can support him with my magic…_ _"I apologize, that was out of line. But who is Melodia?"_

"Melodia is the girl who was with me when we bonded. You remember her, right?"

"…_Yes, I do. So, what do you expect to gain from going to Melodia?" _Vera asked innocently enough. Melodia (if Vera had remembered correctly) had been a sickly-looking girl, much as she herself had been in life; too thin, too pale, and wearing all white had only aggravated that. Judging the style of Melodia's dress against what she had seen on the common people of Mira, Vera guessed Melodia to be the daughter of a noble or some other sort of wealthy family. But still, Vera couldn't understand what Kalas could want from the girl. He didn't seem to care about money, and he definitely wanted to kill his enemies with his own two hands, so funds or possible governmental interference were totally out of the question. Maybe he wanted information?

"I… you promised that you would help me, no matter what, right? So just lay off the questions and trust me for a little longer!"

"_Fine. I was only concerned about you and your welfare. If I seemed to be prying, I apologize, but if you don't want to talk to me, that's fine by me!" _Vera snarled, furious that he had used a promise that she had made against her in such a manner.

"I…!" Kalas made a visible effort to calm himself down. "Vera, I'm sorry. It's just that most of the details of the plan haven't exactly been disclosed to me yet. I don't think I'd be able to answer most of your questions."

"_But you could answer some of them, couldn't you?"_ Vera asked.

"…fine. Do you remember when you were asking about Malpercio?"

"_I thought you said that he didn't exist."_

"I don't really believe that he does, myself, but Melodia seems to. At the very least, the End Magnus apparently exist." Feeling, rather than seeing Vera's blank stare, he chose to clarify. "The End Magnus are supposedly these really powerful Magnus created by evil wizards that tried to destroy the world. Some of the legends also tie them to Malpercio, but… anyway, according to Melodia, they're where Malpercio's body parts are sealed. Melodia wants to revive the god."

"_And how do you know that she's not making all of this up?"_

"Because… according to her… she's had contact with one of the End Magnus before. It's sealed underneath her manor. And she showed me a demonstration of her magic, so I know, at the very least, she's very powerful. The rest… I'll just have to see for myself."

"_From what I have heard, this Malpercio is not a nice god."_

Kalas snorted. "That's probably the understatement of the millennium."

"_Well… would it really be…" _Vera trailed off choking back the 'would it really be right?' that her ailing conscience had tried to tack onto the end of that sentence. If she had a body, she'd probably be biting her lip and blushing slightly. Every once in a while, the 'old Vera' would pop up, the Vera that had believed that people were genuinely good. However, that Vera was nothing more than a feeble ghost. She had died three years ago.

"_Never mind. I almost said something rather stupid."_

"So you _do _make mistakes."

"_Not nearly as many as you. What on earth would you do without my divine guidance?"_

"We're not on Earth, we're in the Sky."

"_Literalist."_

"Huh?"

"…_never mind."_

_

* * *

_

Kalas and Vera slipped into Balanicore at night. They had no desire to have yet another encounter with the townspeople. Kalas tensed slightly as he approached the manor, but relaxed slightly as he saw that the guards near the main door were asleep. Kalas snorted at their incompetence and Vera insulted their intelligence. Kalas chuckled. She really was very amusing… when she wasn't teasing him. Kalas found himself hoping vainly that he could see her, just once more. He had thought he had seen… something… the day that her magic had flared up in his defense against those racist bastards in town, just the briefest flicker of a young woman with long black hair and pale skin who looked like she lived off air she was so skinny…

"_Um, Kalas? Are you paying any attention?"_

"Huh? Sorry, Vera, I was… thinking about something."

"…_you really _would _be lost without me. I was asking how you planned to get in. Even though the guards are asleep, barging through the front door would probably be a bad idea. First of all, it might wake them up. Secondly, there could easily be more guards on the other side of that door. Is there any back way in that Melodia mentioned?"_

"Um, no," Kalas sighed. He could sense Vera getting ready to go off on one of her stinging lectures on the stupidity of her chosen target, (hopefully Melodia and not him) when the door opened, startling both of them.

"You don't need to worry about the guards," Melodia said with a smile. "I put everyone in the manor to sleep."

Vera stared at the young duchess, and immediately felt an odd kinship with the girl. She reminded Vera much of herself, unnaturally pale, thin, and having the appearance of being made out of china or spun glass, like the slightest tap would cause her to shatter into a thousand pieces. However, Vera could sense a dark aura about the girl that terrified her for no reason that she could immediately understand. _Evil, _part of her mind tried to warn her. She told that part of her mind to go to hell, she no longer listened to it. Still, despite her efforts to ignore the tattered remnants of her childhood self, Vera found herself saying, _"Are you sure that we have to do this?"_

Kalas snorted. "Just listen to what she has to say, okay? You might find that there's something in it for you, too."

And Vera followed them. She didn't have a choice, really…

"How did you know that we would be coming?" Kalas asked the girl.

"I could sense the power of your Guardian Spirit, of course. You should be proud, Kalas. Even for a Guardian, she's unusually strong." Vera felt something akin to a blush spread throughout her spiritual being. She enjoyed the compliment, especially since she couldn't detect a hint of greed in it. It was a compliment, plain and simple, and for some reason that made her giddy. _Hmm, maybe because it's been ages since I heard a real compliment…_

Kalas also seemed to enjoy the compliment. "Shall we discuss our business? I was hoping you could explain things to Vera, I'm not really all that good with words…"

"Hmm…" Melodia cocked her head. "Spirit… Vera. Would you tell us how you came to be in our world?"

"_I…"_

"You don't have to talk about it if it's too painful. I was merely curious. So little is known about the Guardian Spirits… and you sounded very distraught when you first came. If there was something I could do to help…"

"… _very well, I will tell you," _Vera replied, ignoring her feelings of unease. And so, haltingly, she explained her story. How she had been born so weak, so helpless, save for her magic. How, at sixteen, her father's betrayal had pushed her to find a cure for her ailing body no matter what the cost. And how she had been betrayed time after time, when those she went to for help could not fulfill their promises, until she had finally been led to Abel, and had been banished to the dark world at the hands of people who she had thought she could trust. When she described the dark world, something flashed in Melodia's eyes, something that Vera didn't like. There was too much eagerness in that expression, an almost fanatical light that made her nervous.

"_I wandered for what seemed like an eternity… and then there was a light. And that's when I met the two of you," _Vera finished. If she'd had a body, she would be blushing right now. Melodia closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them.

"Vera… what if I could give you a body?"

"_W…What? But that's…"_

"Impossible? Why yes, under normal circumstances, it would be. However, with the help of a god…" Melodia trailed off, closed her eyes and tilted her head back, as if thinking. When she opened them and looked at the spot in the air where Vera hovered, she was smiling. "Tell me, Vera. Have you heard the story of Malpercio?"

_"Yes. And I know what you want to do, but..." _Vera froze up. What she was being asked to do was evil, sinful, worse than wrong. Thousands of people would probably be killed by the evil god if she agreed to help. But…!

_Why do I care about them? What has the world ever done for me?Why should I help those who spit on me as I try to drag myself to my feet? Why?_

"_What do I have to do?"

* * *

_

_(The first disk of the game in a nutshell, a la Phoenixfire…)_

_

* * *

_

"Are you alright? You were found unconscious in Moonguile forest…"

"…My name is Xelha…"

"…sure, I know a way in. I'll tell you if you can get me a rainbow spider web…

"Giacomo, get back here…!"

"No way. I have no interest in saving the world…

"Well, since you're in Diadem, we might as well travel together for a little while longer…"

"…It is a pleasure to meet you, I am Lyude…"

"Sure, I'll give you a ride. The name's Gibari…"

"No, we have to save the king!"

"Ayme!"

"End Magnus? Never heard of that before…"

"…Savyna. My name is Savyna…"

* * *

"_Kalas…"_

"You're not having second thoughts, are you Vera?"

"_N-No! But, these people… I feel guilty…"_

"Don't worry about it, Vera. Besides, it's way too late to back out now. And you promised to listen to me, didn't you?"

"_Yes."_

"Do you love me?"

"…_yes…"_

"Then _trust me._ Everything is going to be all right."

* * *

"No, they're firing at us! Go down, into the clouds!"

"Do you remember when we first met? Back in Moonguile Forest?"

"Us heroes, we have so much to do…"

"The End Magnus is missing!"

"Kalas must never lie to the Great Mizuti…"

"…to the final End Magnus. To Alfard…"

* * *

Okay, the game script in the last part probably isn't exact. I don't have time to play thegame over again to get everything perfect.I really, really hate this chapter. That's why it took so long for me to get finished. Luckily, the next chapter, Day of Reckoning, is mostly finished. I just need to edit it somewhat.

Also, I can no longer do reviewer responses, as I don't want to get busted for breaking the rules. You know I love you all anyway.


	5. Day of Reckoning

_Chapter Three: Day of Reckoning_

The lava caves were even more arid and hot than the desert surrounding the town of Azha. Sweat ran down Kalas's face, stinging his eyes.

"_Kalas… are you _sure _that this is what you want?" _Vera asked hesitantly.

"What's this nonsense?" Kalas muttered to the spirit. "You can't get cold feet _now_, Vera. Not after we've come this far…" The truth was, Kalas could feel his conviction wavering. Giacomo _was_ dead, after all. And he didn't want to betray the people who called him friend, who looked at his single organic wing without flinching away from him…  
_"Kalas… Giacomo is dead. Ayme is dead. Your reason for revenge is gone. And I know you don't want to betray your friends."_

"But Vera, you're…" Kalas started, desperate to stop Vera from repeating his own doubts.

"_Dead. I know. It doesn't really bother me… after all, I don't hurt anymore as a spirit… although… I hurt when you're sad." _Vera laughed, a sound like tingling bells. _"Listen to me. I sound like some silly girl in a cheap romance novel. What a fool I am… Although, I can't say I trust Melodia either."_

"Why not?"

"_Do you remember when we defeated that monster in the Shrine of Spirits? The one that came through the dimensional gap? Do you remember how I said I'd seen it before?"_

"Yeah. So?"

"_Kalas, it came from the same realm where Malpercio was sealed."_

"What? Are you sure?"

"_Positive. Although, I couldn't exactly say so at the time. You will recall that everyone was there, and that explaining exactly where I'd seen that particular type of monster before would cause problems."_

"Why didn't you tell me earlier?"

"_Name one time between now and then when we were alone for more than a few moments." _Kalas had to admit, since more or less that point, Xelha had been around him almost constantly, following him everywhere.

"…It doesn't matter. It's too late in the game to back out now. It was too late the moment we gave the End Magnus to Melodia." How could he look them in their faces and admit that he'd stolen their End Magnus and delivered it to their enemies? No, better to complete the betrayal and shatter their trust than go crawling back on his belly, begging for forgiveness. His pride wouldn't allow him to take such an action.

"_It's never too late. I am proof of that."_

"I don't want to turn back, Vera. I want my wings. Melodia promised me two of them. And I know you want a body again."

"…_I do. I just wanted to make sure that that wasn't the only reason you were doing this. This is too much to sacrifice just for me…"_

"We really need to work on your self-confidence." Vera laughed again. Unfortunately, this was just as Xelha caught up.

"What's so funny?" she asked innocently.

"Nothing," Kalas replied brusquely. "Come on, there are more monsters between us and Geldoblame. We have to hurry if we want to stop him!"

"_Laying it on a little thick, 'hero'?" _Vera asked. Xelha giggled, completely missing the subtext in the comment.

"Sheesh! You grow a sense of responsibility, and everyone's at your throat! Geez!"

* * *

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Geldoblame screamed as his mutated body fell into the center of the molten island. Kalas and the others didn't have time to rejoice, however, as they found themselves encircled by Imperial rifles.

"Enough deception," Melodia said, her tone almost sickly sweet. "You have done you promised. You may step forth, and claim your reward as we agreed."

Of course, this statement caused the required panic to ensue.

"Eh? What?" Gibari asked.

"So there _was _a traitor in our midst!" Lyude exclaimed.

"Who lied to the Great Mizuti?"

"Speak up, whoever you are," Savyna growled.

"No, wait everyone!" Xelha exclaimed. She opened her mouth to speak again, but she was cut off.

"It's me, I worked together with Melodia," Kalas sighed. Xelha, instead of responding, merely hung her head in defeat. _Strange. Did she know, somehow? Maybe she wasn't as much of a gullible fool as I first thought._

"This can't be!" Lyude exclaimed.

"Kalas lied to the Great Mizuti?"

"_Duuuuuuuuuuuuuh," _Vera sighed.

"So it was you…" Savyna said.

Xelha said nothing. The blonde witch's shoulders slumped in defeat.

"Kalas, you're not serious, are you?" Gibari asked.

"I'm dead serious," Kalas replied.

"You were responsible for the loss of the End Magnus in Mira," Savyna realized.

"Exactly," Kalas replied, smirking. "In the Confectionary Village, Melodia staggered and stumbled in front of us… I pretended to help her stand up, and handed her the End Magnus."

"What… I should have known there was something up with you acting like a decent person without being forced into doing it!" Gibari snapped, his hands going for his deck.

"I would advise you all to behave yourselves… unless you want me to unleash the full might of Malpercio right here, right now." Melodia commanded, her red eyes daring them to defy her. The five of them glared at the girl, but slowly dropped their weapons.

"Kalas… this is a joke, right?" Lyude asked softly. Kalas was unable to meet the redhead's pleading gaze and looked away.

"Vera!" Xelha shouted at her, her expression a mix of hope and apprehension. "Are you in on this too?"

_The poor girl wants me to try and help her talk Kalas out of this, _Vera realized. _Well, I'm sorry, Xelha, but Kalas has already made his decision, and I won't help you badger him into thinking your way. I always hated it when the people I cared about tried to do that to me… "And if I was?" _Vera asked softly, her voice growing colder and louder with every word. _"In case you didn't notice, I'm Kalas's Guardian Spirit, not yours. I could really care less about what happens to any of the rest of you."_

"How would I be able to do this without Vera's willing help? Erase her memories?" Kalas scoffed. Melodia looked thoughtful for a moment, but the expression disappeared almost as soon as it graced her features. _I wonder if she's capable of that…_ Vera wondered with a feeling like a shudder. She reminded herself yet again that Melodia was more than she appeared to be, and her abilities were an unknown. _Don't forget about that incident in the Shrine of Spirits..._

"Step forward, Kalas, Vera. Become what you have always dreamed to be. Free your mind, and let the power of the End Magnus take control. Allow yourself to be touched by the breath of a god, and you will finally be reborn," Melodia said.

"No Kalas! Don't touch it!" Xelha cried. Kalas jerked back reflexively, then glared at the blonde and started walking forward again as if to spite her, before stopping at the edge of the End Magnus's power.

"What is it you fear? I'm certain you will be fine. Your Guardian Spirit will protect you. You need not fear the madness and anger of Malpercio. You must believe, Kalas… Believe in the power of Malpercio!"

Kalas said nothing. He looked slightly hesitant, as if he was beginning to regret this idea.

"Please! Stop!" Xelha begged.

"_Don't listen to her. She has no right to tell you what to do. If this is what you truly want, seize it without regrets. No matter what your decision is, I will support you," _Vera promised. _"You are the person who saved me from the dark. I will never abandon you."_

"…I know," Kalas said with a nod, as he stepped into the dark circle of the End Magnus. Power lanced out from them in the form of electricity, striking his body. Everyone had to shield their eyes from the blinding light. Well, everyone except for Vera, the Guardian had no optical nerves to be fried by the brilliant glare.

"Kalas!" Xelha cried, sounding as if her heart was breaking. For a fleeting moment, Vera felt sorry for the young woman.

And Kalas emerged, changed forever.

"Look at me! This is my true form… at long last!" Kalas cried. His irises glowed an unearthly blue and the whites of his eyes were now black. And, adorning his back, were two beautiful white wings. However, there was something awful about their splendor, something unholy, twisted, wrong… "Look at my beautiful wings! I'm complete! I've found myself! I feel the power flowing inside me. The power of mighty Malpercio! Flames of life from the gods!"

"Yes, my dear Kalas," Melodia said, looking perversely happy.

"Oh…" Xelha moaned.

"Wait a second! Something else is happening!" Savyna warned. The End magnus were glowing again, but this time, a gray mist emitted from them. When the mist vanished…

A woman was standing beneath the End Magnus. Luxurious black hair fell down her like a dark veil, and her eyes were shut in rapture. She was dressed in nothing but a simple sleeveless white dress that fell to her knees. She took a single deep breath and released it. When she did, she opened her eyes. The irises were a brilliant scarlet, flecked with gold, and the pupils were slitted like those of a cat. They looked like the eyes of a demon.

"I… I can see. I can feel." She took a hesitant step forward. "I can walk without faltering. I can take a deep breath without my chest aching." A smile blossomed on her lips, making her whole face light up. With a delighted laugh, she dashed over to Kalas and hugged him. "I am as I was meant to be. No, better than I was meant to be. I, too, am whole, for the first time in my miserable life."

"V-Vera?" Xelha gasped.

"Who else?" she asked, still smiling.

"This is the beginning of a new era," Melodia said holding out her arms reverently. "A holy war shall be upon us. The frenzied god of despair… Malpercio the cursed is awakening from its eternal slumber!"

"Ha ha ha ha ha…"

"Aha ha ha hah hah!"

"WHA HA HA HA HAH!"

* * *

The young woman yelped again as a jolt of static electricity jolted through the ring she was wearing. "Ouch! I hate winter! I'm like a lightning magnet!" 

"What's wrong, Ani? Zapped again?" teased her best friend, Felicity. "Maybe you should take off that… hey, that's not your class ring!"

"Um… It's Vera's."

Felicity rolled her eyes. "I don't even want to hear why you're wearing it. Come on, the ball's gonna drop! Don't you want to see it, or are you going to spend the rest of the night leaning over the toilet looking like you want to throw up?"

"Um…" In all actuality, the girl nicknamed Ani didn't really feel like moving. She'd felt sick ever since she'd gotten to the party. But Felicity was her best friend, and her ride, so if she really needed to bail, Felicity would have to take her home, and Felicity deserved to have fun. So… "I'm feeling a lot better! Let's go drink some of the champagne that the boys smuggled in!" Ani lied with gusto.

Felicity arched an eyebrow. "You know, if you feel that bad I'd be happy to take you home. Don't lie just because you don't want me to be inconvenienced. Besides," she added with a sardonic grin, "the designated driver cannot drink! It is the sin beyond all sins! Should even one drop of alcohol pass your lips, the police shall nab thee for drunk driving!"

Ani rolled her green eyes. "We have about two minutes to get downstairs. I think I can manage not to keel over and die for two minutes. Thirty, even, Or forty. Or 'till one. I know you want to spend some time dancing with Trey…"

"Ani, you don't have to be so nice…" Felicity offered her friend a hand, and they both walked downstairs.

"Hey, you feeling any better?" asked Marcy, the girl who was hosting the party. "You look like a corpse, Anima. You sure you don't want to lie down?"

"Don't worry, Marcy… I'll be fi… ow!" she yelped, grabbing her hand. _That wasn't a shock… it hurt way too much! It felt almost like… magic._

"**Ten!"** All the people shouted along with the television. Anima looked down at her hand, at the ring. Vera's ring. The garnet that had been set in the ring had turned a rusty almost-black, much darker than any garnet should be.

"**Nine!"**

"Ani, are you…"

"**Eight!"**

"Gotta get outside…" Anima gasped, yanking off the ring.

"**Seven!"**

"The back door's over here…" Marcy yelled over the noise. Anima staggered and ran as best she could for it.

"**Six!"**

Gray mist swirled in front of her vision, but no one else seemed to notice it. She heard demonic laughter echoing inside her head, along with a bell-like giggle that sounded vaguely like her sister.

"**Five!"**

Anima shouldered her way past the people between her and the door, ignoring the insulted looks she was garnering from enemies and acquaintances, and the growing concern on the faces of her friends. She needed to get outside…

"**Four!"**

She yanked on the sliding glass door as hard as she could. She shrieked in frustration and banged on the glass door, tears sliding freely down her cheeks as the music pulsed and people exchanged glasses of alcoholic beverages, ignoring her.

"**Three!"**

A much stronger set of hands closed around hers, and with much more physical force than she could ever have managed on her own, yanked the jammed door open. Anima looked up to see Lucas, a boy on the basketball team who she had dated her freshman year.

"**Two!"**

She gasped a quick thank-you and gave him a grateful smile as she dashed outside. Instinctively, she threw the ring away from her and started to chant defensively, **"Mother Gaia, I submit this plea to thee, in my time of need, as the old year dies, come to my aide and shield me form the blackness that is not of thy creation …"**

"**One!"**

"…**in the name of the power that binds me to thee, given to me by thee, I call upon your strength!"** The gray mist that had been hounding her grew thicker for a moment, but she then heard a shout of denial along with the sound of something shattering, and both the evil laughter and the mist disappeared.

"**HAPPY NEW YEAR!"** came the bellow of glee from inside as Anima sank to her knees. Whatever had just happened, it was over.

Thank God.

"**_A clever move, child of Gaia,"_** whispered a female voice that she could not identify. **_"However, that is not enough to save you from my wrath forever, nor will it protect your pathetic world. The ring was not the only catalyst in your world that can carry my power. You will bow to me eventually… one way or another."_** Evil laughter, much like that of a witch or demoness, echoed softly and then faded. Anima sank into the snow covered ground as shouts of concern mingled with the cries of merrymaking. She saw several shapes exit the house before she blacked out.

* * *

I really hope all of you enjoyed this chapter (Personally, I'm not that fond of it, I wish I hadn't stuck to the game's script so closely, but I felt guilty about not updating in so long...), because you are probably never going to get an update this quickly again. I have part of the next chapter finished, but I have to do Xelha's meeting with the leaders, which will probably be a pain to write. And I want to touch up what I have written. Okay, maybe you'll get the next chapter as quickly as you got this one, but don't count on it. 

Before anyone asks, Gaia is the name of Anima and Vera's world, and the person who spoke to Anima before she blacked out was Melodia. Since I stuck Vera and Anima with Latin names, I probably should have used Terra instead of Gaia, but I don't want people to get things mixed up with Crimson Rain.

And just in case you're curious…

Vera – Truth, true

Anima – This word has about four meanings, the most common of which are mind and soul. It also means courage.


	6. Continue?

_Chapter Four: Continue?_

Xelha groaned. The room flickered blearily, and she hurt all over. The guards had beaten her once Kalas and Vera and Melodia had left, taking the others the Whale knows where. They had hit her with fists, with feet, with rifle butts… but she wasn't dead, or… _don't think about that, _she scolded herself. She was alive. Barely, but alive.

"Hello?" she called out weakly. There was no answer. "Hello?" she pleaded, this time more loudly. "Gibari? Savyna?" Still no response. "Lyude? Mizuti?" The last name was almost a shout, as close to a shout as she could come in her condition, and caused her to cough. When the fit subsided, her hand was sticky. She looked at it, and, to her horror, it gleamed crimson in the dull and unreliable light.

_Congratulations Xelha, _commented her sarcastic side, _you've broken a rib. Or maybe three or four. Or maybe all of them._ "Is anyone there?" she pleaded brokenly. This time, she was rewarded with a plaintive squeak. She looked down… and there was her loyal Greythorne friend, looking up at her with its large blue eyes.

"Meemai!" she exclaimed happily, hugging the Greythorne. However, that was all that was good about the cell. It was filthy, cold, and dark. Was it supposed to be so dark? Or was it only her eyes?

"It's so dark… Meemai, I'm scared…" Xelha whined, hugging her pet Greythorne. She had known from the start that Kalas was bad news (_Yes, and that's why you've been mooning over him like a lovesick puppy…_). However, Vera had given off such a light… Xelha had been certain that neither of them were really… evil.

Oh, how wrong she had been.

She knew that she should be breaking out of here, or at least trying to, to find her friends, to figure out a way to destroy Ka…

No, to _save_ Kalas, _and_ Vera.

Could they be saved? She could understand why Kalas had turned… but why had Vera chosen to join the darkness?

_Pointless question… you know that there's no answer. At least, not in this world._

This world… wait. Could it be possible to go to Vera's world?

_Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. I have to get out of here first…_

A clicking sound drove Xelha to her feet, and she groped around for a weapon. Finding none, she raised her fists as the door swung inward…

To reveal Vera standing in front of her.

The Guardian's appearance had changed from when she had first seen her in the Lava Caves. Vera now wore a flowing white dress with a square neckline, trimmed in gold. She wore a gray cape, a charcoal shade near her shoulders fading to an almost white at the hem and splitting into a cut that reminded Xelha strongly of wings. Around her neck hung a ruby dark as blood and as long as Xelha's thumb dangling from fine golden chain, stolen directly from the treasury of the Imperial Palace, no doubt. There was a wide crimson belt around her waist, so wide it was almost a sash, and embroidered with golden dragons.

"Xelha? Is that you? I had thought…" she trailed off, her yellow-flecked scarlet eyes darkening. "Well, never mind what it is that I thought. They really let you have it…" she fell silent again, or mostly silent. However, the rest of her rant was a buzz too low to make out. "Sit down, fool, you're going to make yourself even worse if you strain your body. Just hold still." Vera pushed Xelha gently, and the young witch fell on the bed.

"W-what are you going to…?" Xelha gasped as Vera laid a hand on her shoulder.

"**Water. Time."** Xelha gasped, her vision blurring… and suddenly, she was lying on the bed, panting. She felt slick and sweaty and a little feverish, but she was no longer a mass of bruises and broken bones. She swung herself over the edge of the bed and tested her feet. She would be able to walk, at least.

" Now, what was I here for… Ah, now I remember. Here," Vera said simply, tossing Xelha's Magnus deck and her golden staff on the bed. "There are few guards at the moment; Melodia is busy crushing what is left of the Imperial resistance. You can escape easily. If you head for Mintaka, maybe you can find a boat and get yourself off this rock."

"V-Vera?" Xelha asked hesitantly, hardly daring to believe what the fallen Guardian was saying.

"That was my name the last time I checked. Hurry up and get going! There are few guards _now_. It's not going to stay that way very long."

"But… why help me?"

"…because I choose to," the Guardian replied, her expression unreadable. Before Xelha could ask any more questions, she melted into the floor, disappearing.

* * *

"Do you have any idea why Melodia told us to let Xelha go? It would have been so easy to kill her now…" Vera asked Kalas as they watched the dragon that Xelha had boarded fly into the distance and disappear. Odd thing, the dragon. And Wazn's witches. Why would they come for Xelha personally? Didn't they have better things to do than free one silly little girl from an area that was crawling with Malpercio's monsters?

"Something about aiding in the full resurrection of Malpercio. She seems to think that Xelha and the Five Losers can get power equal to a god," Kalas sighed. They both chuckled at the thought, but there was a bitter edge to their laughter. In truth, they both missed their friends. However, neither was willing to admit that to the other, for fear of ridicule, and the gap between them grew a little wider. "Ah, why are we talking about them? Who cares, anyway? I don't need them, I have you," Kalas said with a dark smile, stroking Vera's cheek and shoving thoughts of a yellow-haired woman who dressed in pink forcefully aside. "You're far more beautiful and powerful than Xelha will ever be. I don't miss her at all."

"Mm," Vera sighed, leaning against him and ignoring the lie. "I really like this, by the way," she said, holding the ruby up so it glinted in the moonlight. "Thank you for giving it to me. I shall cherish it always."

"As I shall cherish you. I love you. Vera."

"And I you, Kalas…"

The moment, however, was interrupted as a man cleared his throat nervously. Both teens rounded on the man who had interrupted them and glared violently.

"Ah…" the man started hesitantly. He had been an Imperial once, judging by his uniform. He didn't know that he wasn't one any longer, of course, and wouldn't find out for a few weeks yet. Alfard was a large nation and it would take some time to bring everything under control. "Lady Melodia and Lord Fadroh wish to see you both."

That was another part of their deception. Let the common soldiers think that Fadroh was pulling the strings and Melodia was his mistress instead of the other way around. Mere humans could be such idiots.

* * *

Anima drifted and flickered. Her head spun, her vision blurred. She was being carried inside. She was drifting in a void of swirling colors. She was being driven home. She stood beside a man with red hair, in a militaristic uniform. The floor of the place he was being held in was stark stone, and so was the only wall. The floor ended abruptly in three directions and a multicolored nothingness hung behind them like a veil.

He was tired, and bound to something that reminded her of the stockades that people had thrown miscreants in hundreds of years ago. Three feet in front of him lay a gun of some sort, with cards scattered around it. He raised his head, as if he knew she was there. His scarlet eyes scanned the room dully. "Hello?" he called out, a half-whisper. "Is anyone there?"

"I… my name is Anima. Anima Corey."

"I'm Lyude… agh!" he groaned, flinching.

"You're hurt!" Anima cried, gliding/rushing/floating over to his side. "Tell me where! I'm not all that good, but I can heal you!"

"It's… nothing…" he lied, smiling weakly at her. "You… don't seem to be bound here. You should get out while you still can. Before they… come back… don't waste your energy on me…"

"Don't be an idiot. I'm not going to leave you in this miserable place…" she growled at him. It would be hard to heal him. She always needed a focus to perform magic, and if that focus was a color associated with the element, all the better. She could use scraps of her tank top for the water element needed… but she didn't have anything green to represent time, and the last time she had used a healing spell with no focuses… well, it was probably better not to think about that. _I'm sixteen years old now, almost seventeen. I think I have a better idea of what I'm doing now than I did when I was thirteen._ She had one focus color this time. Maybe that would be enough… _I could always look for something green… maybe one of those cards is green… _She leaned over and inspected the cards on the floor. The majority of the cards seemed to be horns on vanilla, white, or black backgrounds. "What were you doing with all these pictures of horns, anyway? Are you some sort of musician?"

Lyude looked confused. "Are you talking about my Magnus?"

"What's a–"

"Anima! Anima, please wake up!"

* * *

Xelha groaned, and stretched, relishing in the feel of fine linen sheets against her unbroken skin. The sun shining in through the window…

_Sun? Window?_ She wondered. Hadn't she been in a cell just yesterday?

Xelha sat up, blinking. She was in a guest bedroom someplace fancy, and red, with a balcony...

_These decorations. I'm back in Anuenue, _she realized. The last thing she could remember was half-collapsing against Kodelle on the White Dragon…

_How… long have I been asleep? _She wondered. It was morning. She had left Mintaka by night, but that could mean that this was the next morning… or some morning a month later. Xelha didn't think she could have slept a month, but she had a sinking feeling that she had slept far more than a few hours. Whatever healing Vera had used on her had been exhausting, and would have required more than a night's rest…

She started and almost cried out when a servant entered the room with breakfast (sweet rolls and an assortment of fresh fruits). _How humiliating. After everything I've endured since I left home, _now _I start jumping at shadows._

"It's good that you're awake, Miss Xelha, you've been asleep for four days!" the young woman exclaimed.

Xelha winced. Four _days_? Wonderful. If the witches were right about her friends being moved out of the Fortress, (and they probably were, she knew that from experience) than they could be anywhere under the sun. Alive, she hoped.

Xelha wolfed down her breakfast, ignoring the servant who was hovering there as if afraid that the young witch would vanish in a puff of smoke. She needed to talk with Queen Corellia and King Ladekahn as soon as she could. She wondered if Duke Calbren had joined them yet, as he had said he would. She wondered if he knew about Melodia yet.

She certainly didn't want to be the one to tell him.

"Um… if you're done with breakfast and feeling up to it, Her Majesty requests an audience with you…"

_Huh? Why so formal? If Kodelle and the others told them about… I'll…_

Xelha forced that thought out of her head. She had enough on her plate without getting angry at the witches for no reason. "I'll be there shortly." Kodelle, Catrenne, and Glamyss had agreed not to tell, and they would not. Besides, it wasn't like anyone was going to guess the truth. After all, most people thought Wazn was only a myth. And she wanted things to stay that way for as long as possible…

* * *

Blearily, a woman with dark hair cracked her eyes open. She was rewarded by a huge drop of water that rolled off one of the leaves above her and landed directly in her eye. With a cry of pain, she jerked upright, and hissed as the action strained her ribs. She pulled out a random healing magnus, a sacred wine, and quaffed the contents. The pain in her side diminished to something bearable, and she leaned over to take a closer look at her side. There was a huge blood covered rending gash in her clothing, and she got the dubious pleasure of watching her skin knit together and cover the white bones of her ribs. Aah, the joys of healing magnus…

Her silvery eyes darkened as she tried to remember what had happened, but she found a blank spot in her memory. One moment she had been fending off a skeleton, then… nothing.

She was a hunter, someone who went into the deep reaches of the Holoholo jungle in search of monsters to sell for magnus ingredients in Komo Mai, and she disliked not being able to remember how she had been injured. It was even worse than having to remember that she had been injured in the first place. _Savyna never got more than a few scratches, no matter how many days she was out here… _she quashed the jealous thought. Savyna had been excellent at what she did, she had paid her Hunter's Guild dues, and she had helped the village of Opu to survive. Sure, she hadn't been the most sociable of people, but that had no bearing on how she got her job done. Jealousy was… unprofessional. Especially since she had been silly enough to challenge Savyna to a duel two weeks after the woman had shown up, in a fit of irrationality. She still had the scars that the woman had given her…

"This isn't getting me to Komo Mai any faster," she muttered. She cast around in her pack for her Locator Stone Magnus, which was issued to every Hunter when they entered the guild. Numbly, she realized that it wasn't in her pack. In an increasing panic, she scrambled around the clearing where she had fallen, trying desperately to find the magnus. Just as she was about to scream in frustration, a glint of pale red caught her eye. Absently, her hand went to her neck, and she realized her necklace was gone. She cursed her stupidity at losing it, one of her few precious possessions, and dove to grab it as if something would come and snatch it away. As she retied the crimson ribbon that held it on her neck, she noticed a magnus sitting beneath where it had lain. She picked it up, and sure enough, it was her Locator Stone.

Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. Two of the most valuable things that she owned, stacked neatly in a pile, as if someone had left them there to find. No monster was that smart…

She scanned the area to see if anything was moving, but the forest was still and quiet. Eerily quiet. Quickly, almost nervously, she went through her possessions to see if anything else had been added or removed. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, she scanned the clearing again, this time for tracks. She found no human ones save her own.

Damnably strange. Could one of the skeleton warriors have…

"Get a hold of yourself, Emera," she hissed, smacking herself lightly across the face. It was time to get to Komo Mai, She hadn't managed to catch anything live this time, but she had gotten some good ingredients, and even found a rare magnus to sell off, and she was running low on food; she'd been out in the wilds for a week. Maybe there would more post from Mintaka, she was so eager to see his response to her last letter… "And stop being so silly," she growled, smacking herself again. "Point me!" she muttered at the Locator Stone, and a beam of light shot off directly behind her. As if the forest itself had picked up on her mood and decided to spite her, it started to rain again, adding sopping wet to the list of things that were pissing her off. With an irritated snarl, she snatched up her bloodied quarterstaff and stalked off.

* * *

Sorry this took so long… I got writer's block on a certain part… so I decided to reformat things and stick that in the next chapter.

And for those of you who also read Crimson Rain… I will update it! I just got a little sidetracked. A lot sidetracked… Stop looking at me like that!

Yes, I added an OC. There is a reason… All will be reveaaaaled!

Eventually…


	7. Countermeasures

First of all, I'm sorry I didn't update over spring break. In regard to that… if I EVER see a bucket of spackling mud _ever_ again, I am going to slip away over the border, buy fireworks, come back, and _**blow it up**!_ I was considering sticks of dynamite, but fireworks are easier to get hold of and less suspicious and they make pretty colors when they go boom…

Don't ask. You're happier not knowing…

_Chapter Five: Countermeasures_

Xelha took a deep breath and stared at the doors into Queen Corellia's audience chamber. She closed her eyes, for a moment before pushing them open…

Queen Corellia, King Ladekahn, and Duke Calbren were all in the audience chamber, apparently deep in discussion. They broke off as soon as they realized she was there, and all three seemed to be relieved that she was there. Corellia smiled warmly at her.

"I'm relieved to see you safe and sound, Xelha. You were unconscious for so long, and everyone was worried…"

"I apologize, your highness. Both for causing you all to worry… and for…"

"Don't talk like that, Xelha," King Ladekahn said, cutting her off. "You and your friends did everything you could."

"You did more than anyone else could have," Corellia added encouragingly. "For that, you have our thanks. What happened is not your fault, and you need not feel guilty because of it. Is that clear, Xelha?" There was more than a touch of command in that, which made Xelha swallow a chuckle. Her present company wouldn't understand the joke. She did allow a smile to blossom, she had needed the encouragement.

"Yes, your highness. Thank you. If I may ask… what is the situation here?"

Ladekahn answered this time. "Things are bad, to put it simply. Melodia seems to have brought the imperial capital under control with much less difficulty than we were expecting. She must have contacts within the military to have pulled off such a feat."

"She does, your highness," Xelha added with a grimace for Fadroh. "General Fadroh will do anything she tells him to… even kill his own Emperor."

Ladekahn frowned. "That _is _bad news. We had heard rumors of Geldoblame's death, but nothing we could confirm. Melodia locked down Mintaka's harbor about a day after she gained control, and we've had no news out of Alfard since then. In addition, minions of the darkness have poured into our world through a dimensional vortex. They're only attacking in small groups, but are causing considerable damage nonetheless. Luckily, our ample preparation has kept the damage to a minimum." He gave her a small smile of gratitude and continued. "Three witches have appeared, and offered their aide. Frankly, without their help, the damage would be much worse."

"Is there any news out of Sadal Suud?" Xelha asked. Ladekahn scowled at that question.

"Sadal Suud is largely untroubled by the monsters so far. Lord Rodolfo of Sadal Suud has holed himself up in his manor and refuses to speak with our couriers. Panicking, no doubt." The word 'coward' seemed to hang in the air as surely as if he had voiced it.

"That _is_ understandable, given the circumstances," Corellia said in a halfhearted attempt to defend the lord of Sadal Suud, although Xelha thought that she silently agreed with Ladekahn's sentiments. "Fortunately, the Cor Hydrae has been silent thus far," she continued, taking over the briefing from Ladekahn. "According to the witches, the seals on the End Magnus have not been completely removed yet, and Malpercio has yet to be fully awakened. Although…" Corellia's expression became thoughtful, "…in order to unseal the End Magnus, Melodia would need something equal in power to that which is sealed within. Where in the world does she intend to find a power equal to that of a god?"

_I know a place where she could start, _Xelha thought, her thoughts drifting to her homeland. She fervently prayed that Melodia had not heard legends of the Ocean Mirror, especially since Catarrene, Glamyss, and Kodelle had left Wazn, leaving the island's defenses shorthanded.

"If we could find out how she intends to completely unseal the End Magnus, perhaps we could devise a plan to stop her… such a pity it would be impossible to slip a spy into Mintaka as long as the blockade is in effect…" Ladekahn sighed.

"This… is all my fault…" Duke Calbren sighed, hanging his head. It was the first thing he had said since Xelha had entered the room, and drew her attention to focus on him. His face seemed more lined, more haggard than when she had last seen him in Mira. The current conflict was clearly taking its toll on him. "I never imagined that my Melodia, or all people, would have such horrible ambitions… Surely I have no apology befitting such an oversight, yet I ask for your forgiveness."

"Please, Lord Calbren," Corellia sighed, her tone saying that this was not the first time that they had had this conversation. "Now is not the time for lament and regret. We must determine what to do. We will have plenty of time for mourning and reflection… _if _we survive and prevail."

"We must resolve this crisis as soon as possible," Ladekahn agreed. "This is no time for guilt, Duke Calbren!"

"…I understand," Duke Calbren said softly, determination creeping back into his voice. "I must get Melodia to realize the catastrophic consequences of her actions. I will do my utmost!"

No one said anything to that. No one wanted to depress the Duke again, and a peaceful resolution would have been appreciated, but no one else in the room thought it would be very likely that Melodia could be reasoned with.

Xelha decided to break the lengthy silence. "Excuse me, but has there been any word on my friends?"

"The appearance of the Cor Hydrae has created small Interdimensional Cracks on each island, five in all, at the sights where there End Magnus were sealed," Corellia said slowly. "We received sightings of five ships from Mintaka heading for the cracks. Regrettably, we do not have the troops to spare to investigate."

Xelha nodded. "Thank you, Queen Corellia. That's where I'll start looking for them, then."

Everyone looked mildly surprised. "Are you sure, Xelha?" asked Ladekahn. "We won't be able to give you any support, and there's bound to be a trap in this somewhere…"

"Your Majesty, with all due respect, I can't just abandon my friends," Xelha protested respectfully, but firmly. "If our positions were reversed, I'm sure that they would do the same for me. Besides… I am stronger than I appear. I'll survive." _Somehow._

All three rulers sighed collectively, not quite believing her, but knowing they would probably have to imprison her to stop her, and they didn't have enough troops to spare for _that_, either.

"If that is the case, than you will need a ship," Ladekahn sighed. "Feel free to borrow the _Mindeer_ again."

"Thank you, Your Highness," Xelha replied, bowing respectfully before walking out.

* * *

Emera scowled openly. Monsters. Monsters pouring out of a hole in the sky, attacking the islands. No one really knew much more than that. Thankfully, the magical barrier seemed to be keeping them out of Anuenue itself, but Diadem and Sadal Suud were having problems, and had been reinforced with almost every available member of Anuenue's military reserve. Rumors were going around about a draft if things got any worse, and that Emera did not like in the slightest.

Apparently Alfard had set up a blockade. No air traffic in or out. No word from Koysta. None at all.

She clutched the cheap crystal necklace he had bought for her in the brief time that he had been stationed in Anuenue, while Emperor Geldoblame had been visiting the queen. Most of the people in Geldoblame's entourage had been really nasty, even when they were viewing the 'primitive festivities'. Koysta had befriended her. He'd bought her the necklace, which she couldn't afford on her own, since all her money went to taking care of her little brother in Opu or helping out the rest of the village. She hoped he was alright…

"Hey, watch where you're going!" snapped an irritable vendor as _he _stepped on _her _foot! She simply glared at him. That was all she had to do, and then he realized what she was and backed off.

"My apologies, Miss Emera!"

"I'm sure," she replied, her voice dripping sarcasm. If she wasn't a hunter, he wouldn't have been so quick, and they both knew that. Not wanting to anger someone who he thought was perfectly capable of tearing him limb from limb, he skulked off, back to his stand no doubt. Even though the celebration of the Celestial Tree was officially over, since the thing had actually _bloomed _this time, everyone seemed to be dragging the celebrations on as long as they could. Or maybe it had something to do with staving off the rumors of the resurrection of Malpercio the Cursed. Emera had never been too great at understanding why people did things… at even why she herself did things from time to time, especially if she was acting solely on her emotions…

"Hey! Give that back!" A young woman's voice trilled indignantly. Emera snapped out of her reflections and saw a young boy dressed a little more shabbily than most streaking through the crowd, clutching a glowing silvery pendant that was definitely magical and most certainly did _not _belong to him. Although the core gleaming crystal seemed to be cracked somehow, it was still worth more than anything a boy dressed like that had ever even touched before, easily. As a hunter, someone who made her living scouring Holoholo jungle for rare things, she could tell this at a glance.

So, almost casually, she summoned her quarterstaff and expertly tangled it in the boy's legs, causing him to come crashing into the ground. He was up almost immediately, glaring death at her, but she had plucked the pendant from his grasp before he recovered.

"Do not take things that don't belong to you. If you need money, than here," she said, handing him a few gold pieces. He shoved them back at her angrily.

"I don't take handouts!" he snarled, baring his teeth at her like some kind of animal. "I won't forget this, either! You'll both pay, and I don't care if you're a Hunter, scary lady! I'll get you too! No one messes with Jotar!" And with that, he scurried off. Emera shook his head at his stupidity. Pride was one thing… survival was another. Of course, if he turned his nose up at gold so freely offered, maybe he wasn't as bad off as his clothing and actions indicated…

A woman with blonde hair, dressed in the most outlandish pink clothing Emera had ever seen, ran up, panting. "Did you see a little boy with dark hair dressed in green? He took something that belongs to me, something very important…"

"A pendant?" Emera asked, dropping it into the hands of a very surprised and grateful young woman.

"Thank you!" she cried, her light brown-yellow eyes lighting up. "I don't know what I would have done without this…"

"What did it do, before it got broken?" Emera asked, genuinely curious. Although she couldn't use magic herself, she had always been able to sense, vaguely, if an object had magical properties. Since she could still sense Xelha's pendant, even though it was broken, it must have been very powerful indeed.

"It indicated the places where the End Magnus were buried, and…" the stranger clammed up so quickly Emera briefly wondered if she'd bitten her tongue. However, that brief wonder was drowned in shock as her eyebrows shot up into her hairline.

"The _End Magnus_?" she hissed. If she had been anyone else, she probably would have screamed it. She didn't know what they were, exactly, had only heard rumors from the palace guards over a shared mug of ale, wild tales of glowing golden cards, and a vision of destruction so horrible that it had caused the Queen herself to collapse… "You, a frail little thing who can't hold on to her valuables, you're mixed up in… in _everything_?" She threw her arms out to indicate the state of the world today.

"I… I guess I'm going to have to explain things. I know of a place that we can go where we won't be overheard. I'm Xelha, by the way. What's your name?"

"Emera," she said simply, and without preamble.

"Y'know, something about you reminds me of a friend of mine. Her name was Savyna…" The girl trailed off, and Emera controlled her shock better this time. _Savyna _had gotten mixed up with this little… puffball?

Something told her that once she had heard the girl's story, nothing would surprise her ever again…

* * *

Green eyes cracked open slightly. It was the night, the silver moonlight that streamed through her window proved that.

"Lyude…" she whispered softly, her green eyes closing again as she tried to make her way back to that barren place that she had gone to in her fevered dreams… because she had made a promise, and she intended to keep it…

Her mother looked down at her, concern radiating from every detail of her diminutive body. She had already lost one daughter to a mysterious illness, she would not lose Anima too. Especially not Anima… not the happy, healthy child that had practically glowed with life and vitality in a way that Vera had not…

She tried to quell the thought, she knew it was favoritism, but she knew it was the truth as well. She had accepted early on that she would probably outlive sickly Vera by a fair margin, that one day she would wake up and Vera would not be anymore. It had not helped when the time came, not really, but it had hurt a little less than this because she had always been expecting it, had been prepared for it. She had not been prepared for this, though. First the nightmares, and now this collapse... just like Vera...

_Anima _will _wake up… _she promised herself softly. She also made a second promise.

To find the person, or the thing, that was responsible for what had happened to her daughters, and destroy it. She was a mother, if not a very good one, and her mother's intuition was telling her that there was nothing _natural _about what had happened to her babies, her darlings. Especially since the incident almost four years ago now, when both her daughters had demonstrated that they were anything but natural. And if that 'something' that had brought this black disaster on her house was currently sleeping in the master bedroom…

Well, she knew where he kept his revolver now, and _she _had taken and hidden the only set of keys. If _he _was the problem, he could be dealt with easily. They could buy a smaller house, and even with Vera's plethora of medical problems, they could live quite well off of _his _life insurance.

If he was the one responsible, then it would be the ultimate irony. That the man who had tried to kill both her babies… _twice, _if he was responsible for what was going on now… would furnish all three of them with a comfortable existence in death.

And, while she thought this, 'That Man' slept on quite comfortably in his bed, confident that he held the power in the household. Confident that his wife, at least, had forgiven him, even if his daughters had not.

Pity the fool that continues to share a bed with a woman after he has threatened her children, for that man sleeps next to a cobra every night, whether he knows it or not.

* * *

Emera took a long sip of beer out of one of her Magnus. She never drank all that often, and it was really just a wheat magnus that had fallen to the bottom of her bag and fermented, but she felt that she needed it today.

First of all, she was sitting in a cathedral. A cathedral she'd reached by jumping into a big blue _flower, _a plant that she had walked past several times but ignored. A cathedral where one of the priests had nattered on about praying and making her stronger, and she had tried, for kicks, and it had actually _worked. _That, she found to be eerie to no end. And then, of course, there was Xelha's story…

Dead gods. A quest, an evil emperor (Not that she needed this girl's help to know that Geldoblame was rotten to the core) love, friendship and betrayal. A _Guardian Spirit _of all things, one that had been given the ability to physically manifest herself in their world, but on top of the rest of the insanity, that almost seemed normal. The way Xelha talked about the spirit… Vera… as if such things fell out of the sky every day with the rain boggled her mind. But somehow, for some reason, the though of Savyna wasting away in some fancy interdimensional prison seemed as strange as everything else put together…

The logical part of her wanted to turn around and walk away. The part of her that had always been naturally curious, the part that had driven her to become a Hunter when she could have made a decent living in several other professions, wanted to go with Xelha, to see the things she spoke of with her own eyes.

And then there were two, illogical voices that interwove themselves intoxicatingly with her reasoning, beating logic into the back corner.

There was the bright voice, that she had usually only heard when she was thinking about her younger brother but had recently been very loud when the subject touched on Koysta, pointed out that this Xelha had a ship. And that this Xelha was planning on going to Mintaka sometime in the near future, and if she was in Mintaka she could find out what was going on and maybe could even help him…

And there was a nasty, dark voice tinged with sickly purple and putrid green that kept on pointing out that it would be _really _satisfying to see the look on Savyna's face when it was _Emera_ who came in to save her, after that crushingly humiliating defeat the woman had handed her the only time she had challenged her. That it would be rewarding to see that cold, haughty woman who held herself so aloof brought down to the level of everyone else, cold, afraid, alone…

Emera tried her best to silence that hateful little voice, but jealousy is a difficult voice to rub out.

"So, you're clearly used to traveling in a larger group, but now you're alone."

"That's not entirely true, I do have Memai." The little aqua Greythorne poked out of Xelha's hood and trilled happily. Xelha herself seemed nervous though, which was understandable. The man who had been with her almost from the beginning had turned out to be a traitor, and her other friends were imprisoned.

"But Memai, cute though I'm sure she is, can't fight. I can." _I can't believe I'm saying this. Who's going to take care of Havar while I'm off gallivanting with this girl I don't even know trying to save humanity?_

_-Boat-_ reminded the bright voice. As if she could forget!

_-revenge…- _said the dark voice. And then the bright voice tried to strangle the dark voice and all was peaceful in her head again.

"Are you offering to come with me?"

"…I am. On two conditions. One, before we go anywhere, we stop in Opu. I have a younger brother, and I'll need to get someone to take care of him while I'm away. Two… I have a friend who lives in Mintaka. I want to make sure he's alright. So, when we get there, I want to take some time to look for him. Is that okay with you?"

"It's fine!" Xelha held out her hand, and Emera took it, sealing the unspoken pact between them.

"So, little princess, where to first?"

Xelha started at the title, her eyes going wide, "I... I'm not a princess..."

Emera stared at her new traveling companion. "I was joking."

"Eheh... I knew that..." _Was that someone's nickname for her? Kalas's, maybe? _Emera made a mental note not to use that teasing title again. "So, ever climbed the Celestial Tree?"

"Do I look like one of the Keepers to you?"

"I'll take that as a no, then. Well, now you're going to get your chance, because that's where Anuenue's Interdimensional Crack is."


End file.
